Eric's Story
by TheAnonymous1OfThemAll
Summary: The Divergent story and more, but from Eric's view, focusing on his rivalry with Four.


Prologue

The room is cold. My hands are like ice in their shackles and are so pale I can see my veins through my somewhat translucent skin. I am clothed relatively warmly in my dark jacket, but I still feel every cool gush of air in my prison. It is colder than any place I can ever remember being, and that is saying something significant, considering who I am.

I can hear the howling of the wind against the walls of the room, hear the rain beating down against the roof. It's coming down in droves now. I smile wryly even though it damages my already bleeding face which by now has become numb to the pain. The rain is fitting, if you think about it. It's the way someone ought to die.

Someone like me.

Oh, I know that there is no uncertainty that I will die here. The Dauntless are coming for me now, I'm positive of it. The Dauntless, the traitors, who believe that I've deceived them. The Dauntless, with their little team of cowards, who were too resistant to change. The Dauntless, who are who I am, and yet have also destroyed anything that I ever was.

And soon they will kill me. _He_ said as much earlier yesterday, when he came when no one else did. He told in an attempt to frighten me, I know. It's always been the joy of his life to make my pain his delight. And he has succeeded in his goals. My execution will probably occur at his hands. I certainly hope it does.

Tobias Eaton.

Even the name in my mind causes the familiar anger and hatred to flare up, as fresh as when I felt them for the first time. I can manage the emotions just fine. I thrive on the feelings. They have always been the only things that I could always hold onto up until this point. But up from that comes the feeling that I cannot stand.

The curiosity. The stupid Erudite curiosity that I inherited from my old faction that tries to tell my brain that maybe yesterday, Tobias didn't come to celebrate his victory in my face. That perhaps, it was meant to be more of a warning. A way of saying, 'prepare yourself'.

Prepare myself. I smile again, my grin growing and my teeth emerging. There is nothing to prepare. Anything that I have done is beyond that by now. What am I supposed to do? Repent and beg for mercy?

I laugh, and my voice is husky and sore.

Do I deserve to die? I honestly don't know anymore. There was a time when it all seemed so black and white, before the lines were blurred. But now, I can't even think straight.

I laugh again, but this time, once I start I soon realize that I can't stop. I repeatedly begin taking in everything around me, and it soon becomes bathed in a hilarious light. The world is swirling in front of me, and I'm aware that I'm becoming hysterical.

My eyesight is clouding and I jerk at my eyes with my hands. They come away wet. I'm shaking and I know that I need to pull myself together. There are security cameras. I am still a Dauntless leader. I must show no signs of weakness.

I force myself back against the chair that I sit in and close my eyes. Through the choking and gasps of air I tell myself that this is just like a Dauntless simulation. That as soon as I get my heart rate down, I'll be fine.

Except that this won't all be fine. And when I open my eyes again, I will be in the same situation. I am in an eternal fear simulation.

My dark, dirty hair falls into my face, and is damp from the sweat that has broken out on my forehead.

As I look down at my hand, I see the blood that is crusted from a previous wound. I can't help it as my smile quirks upward again as I see in my mind the blood that will soon pour from me when I die. I briefly contemplate how I'll be killed. Probably a gun. That would be satisfactory.

Blood. As I start to think about it, it's everywhere, all around me, covering my vision with the memories of the past.

"Your heartless deeds," Tobias had called them.

Heartless. Blood. Guns, and knives, and so many other forms of pain I no longer remember. The pain toward men and women.

Towards children.

All caused by me.

Perhaps I should feel regret, but I don't. I feel numb, and unfeeling, except for something small in the pit of my stomach that I recognize easily, but refuse to identify. It's the thing that I have always wanted to be free of for as long as I can remember. It's the thing that has always tormented me during every moment of my short life. What has surrounded me wherever I went to escape it, and even now has risen back from its grave to threaten me one last time.

Fear.

And I don't believe that it's the fear of death. Death is a pleasure, and will be a sweet mercy when compared to life. It's life, life that is the cruelty in this world.

I should know.

The memories of my early life that I suppress come back in their full force. They are from a different time. And they are about a different boy.

A small child. A dumb one. One who despite whatever he did, always stood out a bit too much and never quite fit in.

One, who before he became what many would deem a heartless killer was known only by a single, simple name.

Eric.


End file.
